Wednesday, July 23, 2008

I was about nine years old when these cards first hit the shelves. I can remember hopping on my Huffy "dirt bike" and hitting the trails with my friends. We'd ride for what seemed like miles (I actually looked it up once in Google maps, and it turned out to be all of a half-mile). When we finally broke free of the wooded "forest" near our subdivision in Western Pennsylvania, we'd come to the paved end of an incomplete road. Racing down the street, we'd try to see who could ride the fastest to the little store at the bottom of the hill. It was called "The Dairy," and we spent many hours and many dollars buying Swedish Fish, Bottle Caps, and Topps baseball cards.

My friends and I were not so sophisticated (as I may have mentioned in previous posts) as other collectors might have been. We did not call these cards the "1978 Topps Regular Issue." No, no. These were "The Written Kind" because of the cursive writing used on the team names. So, when trading, we would eventually trade our "written kind" cards for "the baseball kind (1981 Fleer)," the "Flag Kind (1980 Topps), or the "Hat Kind" (1981 Topps).

I took a chance and bought this pack of 1978 Topps cards on eBay. I don't remember the winning bid price, but the memories alone were worth the money spent. Especially the THIRTY year-old piece of gum:

The pack itself is very simple: a non-specific catcher (though he appears to be wearing Pirates colors), an old-school Topps logo, "Major League Baseball Picture Cards" and the classic "1 stick bubble gum." The first two players out the pack are Francisco Barrios (White Sox), and Jose Baez (Mariners). I did not remember either of these guys, but that makes sense for the time frame: I was nine living in Pittsburgh - it was all about the Bucs and the Tribe for me in those days (heh-heh, not much has changed in 30 years...).Next up, Phil Garner (Pirates!), Joe Sambito (Astros "Hey, here's the strike zone!" shirts), and Darrell Johnson (Mariners manager). That's two Mariners so far in this pack...The next three players are Mike Garman (Dodgers), Lamar Johnson (White Sox - two White Sox in this pack. Would have been a good 'Sox or No Sox'), and Charlie Williams (Giants). Williams' card has the rules for the "Play Ball (played by two)" game that appeared on the backs of cards. Many cards featured an actual play (Garner has a "Home Run" on his) and two people would take a stack of 50 cards and play out a game of baseball with the stack. What kids did before Pokemon, Magic, and Yugioh...The next card is a Rookie Pitchers card. It features a Mariner (Of course) in Steve Burke, Matt Keough (A's), Lance Rautzhan (Dodgers), and Dan Schatzeder (Expos). After that, I pull a TRIBER! WAHOO! Fred Kendall in his second year as a Tribe catcher. Unfortunately, his card is a "Fly Out." And third, Roric Harrison (Tigers) rounds out this trio of cards.Finally, we have Tim Blackwell (Expos), Charlie Moore (Brewers), and the Seattle Mariners Team Card. It's a good thing we got the team card, considering how many Mariners we pulled in one pack! :-)

When I was kid, I loved taking my No. 2 pencil and filling in the squares beside the names of the players I had in my collection. I used a pencil because when I traded away one of those players, I would go back and erase the mark. As you can imagine, my checklist cards had Tipton written all over them....

Thanks for bringing back the memories, David. The 1978 set was the first one that I stuck it out and completed. I have a bunch of 1973s, but I was only 7 when I bought them, and never finished the set. My experience with the '78 set sounds very similar to yours. All the 10-13 year old boys on my block would gather our bikes and trek a quarter mile to 7-11 to pick up our packs. It was a crazy day when you spend a whole dollar on 5 packs!